How to be successful even when you feel like giving up

I’ve got a jaded past of bailing on shit when it gets too hard. I like to convince myself that I didn’t really want what I was going for anyway. That helps me mask any pain I’m feeling that I’ve let myself down in life again.

I’m your classic ‘get all jacked up on an idea, start doing it, realise it’s not all beer and skittles then sack it off’ kind of gal. I let my mind send me into the pits of hell running the standard script of “you don’t have it in you, you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t do this.” Again, to mask this pain and not admit defeat, I turn my attention to something shiner to pursue and leave whatever I’d started in the dust.

When people ask how the current project is going, I answer with “oh I’m not doing that anymore, instead I’m doing this new even more awesome thing.”

I struggle with commitment. But underlying that is fear. It’s really about me not managing my own tension, buying into my unconscious mind and giving into its power.

Oh and did I mention this usually involves some carnage before I bid my farewells? Hitting my personal self-destruct button with a cocktail of sex, drugs and alcohol: the perfect combination to destroy any motivated bone in my body.  But my excuse is, I’m just having fun.

It’s a lie though. It’s fun for a couple of hours where I get to act inappropriately and dodge responsibility. Then it’s waking up feeling like a warmed up piece of asshole, not having created anything I would love, and feeling like my life isn’t going anywhere.

Truth is I’m scared of failing. I’m scared of judgement. I’m scared of being bad at something before I’m good at it. I’m scared of embarrassing myself. So I throw in the towel before I really give it a crack.

What I’m continually learning though, is that it’s my resistance keeping me small and stuck.

It’s not personal. It’s structural.

Resistance is really just being uncomfortable with tension and submitting to our unconscious automatic behaviours. We’re taught that tension is a bad thing, that we shouldn’t feel it, so we go into whatever default mechanism we have to resolve it. Be it getting white girl wasted, banging someone, spending our cash monies on sweet new threads, binge watching Netflix, or monotonously scrolling social media feeds like mother fuckin’ zombies. We all do it. There’s no judgement. We just struggle to hang out with our own tension, so we act unconsciously to avoid feeling it.

Funny thing is, though, we need tension to create. We have an idea, a dream, a vision that we’ve not realised, this creates a tension – something we would love that we don’t yet have. What our minds then like to do is try to figure out how to get it.

MISTAKE.

Contrary to popular belief, as soon as we try to figure out how to do something, we’re fucked. Why? Because we’ve engaged our limiting beliefs. No longer are we in the unknown, the realm of creativity; we’re in our heads, stuck in what we believe is possible. What we already know. Our minds then go about trying to create the conditions we believe need to exist before we can have what we want. Like having more money, more followers, more credibility. That energy is wasted.

There are no conditions, but because we’re attached to thinking there are, resistance sets in and we procrastinate, dodge, avoid and ultimately give up.

There is an absolute art to mastering resistance and it’s in using our will. Creating anything we’d love is going to bring up tension, but it’s a good thing, when applied in a higher level structure. It’s through the act of understanding how our monkey mind wants to sabotage us, telling it to eat a bag of dicks and committing to our vision anyway.

When we see it, we can choose differently.

The trick is, not buying into what our minds tell us, but rather using that information to strengthen our creative tension. Acknowledge what’s there. Ok I’m running an “I’m not good enough” story. We don’t need to do anything about it, just be aware of it. That resolves the psychological tension and adds additional energy towards manifesting what we’d love to create.

On the flip side, if we’re unaware of it, it will run on autopilot and we won’t even realise we’re on the fast track to Shitsville, where our dreams go to die. But hey, at least seven hours of watching reruns of classic Simpson’s episodes got us through the Sunday hangover. “Everything’s coming up Milhouse.”

So what’s a fail-proof process to be a successful creator?

1.     Decide what you would love to create (your dream/vision).

2.     Notice what your mind tells you about that (eg. Stank talk you tell yourself).

3.     Be aware of the emotion associated with the stank talk (eg. Fear, anger, sadness).

4.     What is it telling you to do?

5.     Don’t do that.

6.     Instead allow it to be there but reconnect with your vision.

7.     Create a full sensory experience of it (what it looks, feels, tastes, smells, sounds like) envisioning it like it’s happening right here and now.

8.     Really connect to the emotion of it (this will be more like joy, love, peace)

9.     What is it telling you to do? Do that.

10. Consciously assign your will to it and choose to create it. Then follow the eff through.

When we connect to the emotion of our vision, it drives our action. If we’re not connected to that, we’ll unconsciously be in the emotion of our stank talk, which limits our potential and keeps us wasting energy trying to create the ‘right’ conditions.

We are powerfully creating in every moment. It’s whether we’re creating what we’d love, or giving into our resistance and staying exactly where we’ve always been.

Don’t hit the self-destruct button. Be aware. Assign your will. Use whatever lead is there and turn it into gold.